5G is beautiful, but we also need to solve the problem: Why must we pay attention to 5G-Advanced today?

I wonder if you have noticed that in 2019, the first year of 5G commercialization, there were still many questions around us, such as "Why use 5G?" and "What else does 5G have besides being fast?" In 2021, people's thoughts on 5G are more like "Why not?"

The value of 5G has been recognized by both the consumer market and the enterprise market in the process of digitalization of thousands of industries, and has entered the fast lane of large-scale popularization.

There is no end to network upgrades and iterations. It is time to take a step towards the next mountain and think about how to enhance the vitality of 5G networks in the next 10 to 20 years and develop forward with high quality, high efficiency and sustainability.

As we all know, China has built the world's largest 5G network, truly leading the innovation and industrialization of 5G technology. Chinese operators, suppliers and developers in various industries have naturally become the "outposts" of the times, taking the lead in exploring the new task of 5G evolution.

On December 22, China Mobile and Huawei jointly held the "5G-Advanced Dual-Chain Converged Wireless Innovation Results Release Conference" and worked with industry partners to jointly release 5G-Advanced dual-chain converged wireless innovation results.

This press conference is special because, on the one hand, China Mobile, as the main force in building a strong network country, digital China and smart society, and the vanguard of technological innovation, its exploration has benchmark and reference significance; at the same time, 5G-Advanced has attracted a large number of industry partners to participate from the very beginning, accelerating the rapid birth and implementation of phased results, which has become a new paradigm for the evolution of 5G.

This is an opportunity. At the end of the year and the beginning of the next year, let us take advantage of the blooming of 5G-Advanced and see how the next spring of wireless networks will come to us.

Farming: Soil in the Digital Age

Globally, the 5G industry is developing rapidly. Currently, more than 180 commercial networks have been built, and the number of 5G users has exceeded 540 million. 5G supports the construction of mobile applications, industrial Internet, smart cities, etc., and has in fact become the foundation of digital networks. A report predicts that in 2030, mobile network traffic will become the main carrier of Internet traffic.

As 5G becomes increasingly important, the scale and complexity of the services it carries and the technical challenges it faces are increasing, requiring continuous evolution in three aspects.

1. Continuous breakthroughs in capabilities. Application innovation based on 5G technology is booming, and large-volume services such as the Metaverse, VR/AR, and others are growing. Network service applications are increasing, and services are becoming more and more complex. In the future, network pressure will increase several times or even dozens of times, which requires greater bandwidth, lower latency, stronger connections, and more efficient operations and maintenance.

2. Supporting digital transformation. Part of the commercial and industrial value of 5G comes from supporting digital applications in the industry. Taking China Mobile as an example, it has carried out a large number of 5G application practices with Huawei in the fields of mining, ports, manufacturing, high-speed rail, and medical care. With the continuous deepening and expansion of digital scenarios in the industry, higher requirements are also put forward for 5G networks, such as large uplink capacity, precise positioning, green and low-carbon, etc.

3. Standards need to come first. The construction of each generation of wireless networks requires standards to come first. In terms of wireless resource utilization and the direction of technological evolution, innovation based on standards can enable rapid technological innovation and implementation in applications and terminals. In the 5G stage, there are almost all new demands, new problems, and new challenges that have never appeared in the history of wireless networks, such as visual perception of smart transportation, digital twins, carbon compliance and carbon neutrality, etc. Therefore, the standards for 5G evolution are inseparable from breakthroughs in cutting-edge technologies, in-depth insights into the industry, and the joint participation of industry partners.

5G needs to continue to evolve and inject more capabilities. Faced with this situation, China Mobile has chosen to take the initiative to explore the blank technology field.

As early as 2020, China Mobile and Huawei took the lead in proposing the industry vision for 5G evolution, and reached a consensus with all parties in the industry that 5G needs to evolve to the next stage. In April 2021, 3GPP officially named 5G evolution 5G-Advanced, marking a new stage in 5G evolution.

Xu Xiaodong, group-level chief expert of China Mobile, shared that innovation towards 5G-Advanced is an ongoing process. In August 2021, China Mobile, together with 16 companies in the industry, jointly launched the 5G-Advanced Innovation Chain and Industrial Chain Integration Action Plan. Guided by issues such as "the gap between existing standard technologies and industry needs", "the pain points of existing standard technologies in actual deployment", and "the needs and expectations for wireless communications in the next decade", China Mobile actively explores new technologies and solutions and promotes their implementation in 3GPP.

After four months of development, 5G-Advanced has produced many landmark technologies and application results.

Among them, duplex evolution, terminal aggregation, XR multimedia service enhancement and other projects help build excellent networks; AI applications in the physical layer, network autonomous driving, lower cost and simpler IoT and other projects make it possible for the network to be "intelligent and simple". Based on the social responsibility of green and dual carbon, 5G-Advanced is also exploring projects such as network energy saving, lower power consumption applications, flexible cells or multi-spectrum flexible applications. At present, original system development and test verification work has been carried out on many 5G-Advanced iconic technologies such as interaesthesia, full-duplex, and passive IoT.

It can be seen that as promoters of the 5G-Advanced standard, China Mobile and Huawei are also the number one "gardeners" of this 5G evolution test field, working hard to cultivate the fertile soil for 5G development.

Nurturing: Industrial innovation in progress

Since this is the "final exam", why not let the results speak for themselves and see what changes 5G-Advanced has brought to the industry? What commercial value can 5G evolution bring?

At the "5G-Advanced Dual-Chain Fusion Wireless Innovation Results Release Conference" on December 22, we can see innovators from all walks of life building digital solutions that meet their own needs.

Dahua, a video-centric smart IoT solution provider, has found in the process of serving government, enterprise and civilian digital businesses that 5G can meet urgent needs such as intelligent video recognition, convenient deployment of hardware cameras, and on-demand customization of applications. Many technological breakthroughs are needed. Dahua uses its original peak scheduling system to schedule all cameras under the entire cellular base station, so that the cameras will not form peak concurrency, thereby greatly reducing the bandwidth requirements for the entire network deployment and reducing application costs. At present, Dahua's solutions have been applied in the construction of Leishenshan and Huoshenshan, urban sewage management, air conditioning scheduling and other fields to help control energy consumption and promote digital upgrades.

The drone industry generally faces problems such as low positioning accuracy and easy interference with aircraft. Therefore, the Civil Aviation Administration of China strongly supports the application of 5G technology in the aviation field, promotes the application of 5G telepathy technology, and conducts large-bandwidth perception and control of drones with communication technology, thereby promoting the development of the drone industry. At present, communication and perception integration has also been included in the 3GPP standard and has become one of the directions of 5G evolution. The Civil Aviation Administration of China and China Mobile have joined hands in innovation to accelerate the arrival of smart aviation based on 5G telepathy.

The popularization of smart homes is of great significance to every family. In 2019, Haier jointly established the Haier Clothing Internet 5G Joint Innovation Laboratory with China Mobile and Huawei. The jointly created PassiveIoT Internet of Things technology can support power consumption sensing over longer distances and can be flexibly deployed based on the cellular main network infrastructure. It can not only meet the upgrade needs of smart home appliances, but also meet the application needs of typical scenarios such as manufacturing and animal husbandry.

The currently popular concept of the metaverse, with VR/AR as the entrance to the virtual world, is also inseparable from the continuous evolution of 5G networks. Yixian Advanced Technology has jointly innovated with China Mobile and others to develop the industry's first augmented reality interactive projector, which achieves real-time integration of virtual information and real three-dimensional scenes through projection. It has been used in kindergartens, early childhood education institutions, playgrounds, science and technology museums, museums and other places, allowing children and users to enjoy an immersive experience.

The active participation of industry partners is an unprecedented standard breeding. The process of finding the integration point between business and 5G technology in various industries has triggered more and more innovation singularities and constantly broken people's imagination of 5G.

Blooming flowers: Proven industrial value

It can be found that the special feature of 5G-Advanced, in addition to the leading technology itself, is that it has explored a new paradigm of industrial innovation through "dual chain integration". Major operators, equipment manufacturers, industry organizations and upstream and downstream partners in the industry chain around the world are jointly exploring the path of 5G evolution along the three major directions of excellent network, intelligent and simple, and low-carbon and high-efficiency.

Based on the above achievements, today we can roughly summarize the value of 5G-Advanced dual-chain fusion, a new paradigm of 5G evolution.

1. Cooperation. 5G-Advanced dual-chain integration is a technology test field established by China Mobile and Huawei together with industry partners. From the beginning, the industry chain can participate in technological innovation. Real industry scenario problems put forward requirements for network and technological innovation directions, respond to new requirements and changes of 5G networks in a more targeted manner, and shorten the innovation cycle and uncertainty.

Regarding this change, Xu Xiaodong, chief expert of China Mobile, believes that 5G is beautiful, but we also need to solve the problem. We are facing various problems raised by industry customers, and we need more industry customers to work with us to improve it, so more industry customers have participated in the technology iteration and evolution, and participated in the 5G-Advanced evolution.

2. Reality. At present, the results of 5G-Advanced dual-chain integration are all technologies of China Mobile and Huawei, tested in the real environment of the field, which ensures from the source that technological innovation is not just a paper article, and can play a practical role in the future to help the industry and society improve quality and efficiency. China Mobile has worked with Huawei and industry partners to explore the key scenarios, technologies and directions of 5G evolution, laying the foundation for the real implementation of technology.

3. Leading. For the global mobile communications industry, 5G is a brand new no-man’s land, and 5G-Advanced is exploring a field that has never been explored before. This requires the formulation of standards to be more efficient and accurate, and to adapt to the future and lead the development of the global industry.

In this regard, Xu Xiaodong also said that as an operator, we know where the pain points are for the problems, bottlenecks and demands that arise in the commercial use of 5G, which ones can be solved conditionally, and we have the responsibility and obligation to solve them. Therefore, China Mobile has made great efforts in the evolution of 5G-Advanced.

The innovative technology verification results released by China Mobile and Huawei this time have verified the role of the 5G Advanced dual-chain fusion plan and the feasibility of the 5G evolution innovation direction. On this fertile soil, new technologies will continue to thrive.

Fertilization: endless technological breakthroughs

Of course, technological innovation is a never-ending process of constantly solving business problems. If we want 5G-Advanced to flourish, we need to continue to fertilize and inject momentum into technological innovation. This also puts forward new requirements for China Mobile and Huawei.

This press conference also gave the main direction of future 5G evolution.

1. Continuously build an excellent network. Create higher network performance, greater coverage, deterministic latency guarantee, etc. to better support digital services.

2. Continue to promote intelligent development and simplification. Introduce AI capabilities to build a 5G smart network, ensure that the 5G network "automatically drives" in a complex operating environment, reduce the difficulty of operation and maintenance, and meet industry needs at low cost and high efficiency.

3. Firmly implement green and low-carbon. Through the development of green equipment, new sites, energy consumption assessment systems, etc., 5G energy consumption is reduced in all aspects of the entire link and cycle, helping to achieve the country's dual carbon goals.

In this process, China Mobile has continuously led technological innovation, injected new impetus into the 5G industry, and brought new possibilities. With firm steps, it is leading the long and unfamiliar road of 5G evolution.

This is another value of 5G-Advanced, using companionship as a confession, expressing deep affection with innovation, sowing seeds over the years, and sowing the seeds of a vibrant spring for the world.